Thought experiment in Veganism: I will never have a chicken coop even if I move to a cottage in the country and why eggs are not vegan
(This essay was written 100 percent by a human being without the use of AI. Wow!)
I love eggs, always have. Love them scrambled, hard boiled, poached on toast, or baked in a quiche. Eggs feel like they are just the right food for my body. My body responds very well to them. I digest them well and feel great after eating a couple of eggs.
But I don’t eat them anymore because I don’t want to support the factory farm system or hurt animals in any way that I can avoid. Eggs are not vegan because animal welfare is still and issue even if I don’t kill anyone to get eggs. Besides there are plenty of egg alternatives I can eat and enjoy just as much as eggs without using animals for my pleasure. There is always scrambled tofu, and these days there are some pretty tasty liquid egg alternatives I can use.
But what if I lived in the country in a cute little cottage and could have a few hens who lived happy lives? I could stroke them and play with them and snuggle them to my breast and kiss them and steal their eggs when they laid on occasion, right?
Wrong.
But why not? No other vegans would be around to see me at my mischief because I would be out in the boondocks with very few visitors. If vegan friends came to visit me in my adorable abode, I could hide the chicken coop way at the back of the property or say the hens were rescued from a factory farm and that I never ever ate any eggs they laid.
And if I did fry up a few eggs it wouldn’t hurt the chickens, right? They would be happy and healthy and living their dream life pecking for worms in the yard and having a lovely coop to sleep in at night away from predators. And chickens probably aren’t smart enough to notice that the egg is gone after I steal it and eat it, right?
Wrong.
I would know that I was taking advantage of someone who couldn’t object or even understand what was going on. It would just be too creepy. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy my delicious eggs knowing that I was using the chickens to get something out of them.
It’s kind of like pedophilia where an older child of say 10 or 12 is doing it to a very young child of say 2 or 3 who doesn’t really know what is going on or know that much older kids or adults shouldn’t have sex with them. They don’t even know what sex is, right? They don’t exactly know if anything is wrong with touching an older kid’s genitals or having theirs touched, maybe it even feels sort of nice so what’s the harm?
Ha, Ha! Of course that is a terrible idea, I’m just checking to see if you’re still awake!
But some tween aged kids don’t know this and engage in this activity thinking it’s ok. Mostly they eventually realize that this isn’t ok, feel bad about doing it and stop. Some people never realize this and keep doing it late into adulthood of course.
Similar to how people keep eating meat or dairy or eggs even after they realize it’s probably wrong on many levels. OK pedophilia and eating animals as the same thing? Maybe I am stretching the comparison a little far?
What do child brides have to do with chickens?
Well, how about another example: child brides are considered normal in some cultures and have been for millennia. An 11-year-old girl is given to a man in his 30s or older so her family can survive. They need to cut down on the number of kids at home. Maybe they need to trade the girl for cattle. Whatever. In some cultures, this is perfectly normal and customary.
There is no such thing as childhood in the pre-industrial world, so this isn’t seen as some monstrous activity. Bak in pre-industrial times no one knew brain development didn’t end until our mid-20s so as soon as you were out of toddlerhood and into kindergarten age you were a tiny adult. So, yeah. As soon as a kid reaches physical maturity and can bear young who are we to say it’s wrong for her to be traded for cattle so the rest of the family can survive?
There is this Netflix animated story called Sitara, created by Canadian-Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy portraying a 5-year-old girl who wants to be a pilot juxtaposed with her 14-year-old sister who is being married off to a much older adult male. The 5-year-old girl doesn’t even know she cannot grow up to be a pilot, or that she will be married by the time she’s 12 or 14
To me the film smacks of judgment and feels like it is out of context for westerners to judge another society by our own standards. Obaid-Chinoy went to Smith college and seems very westernized while she is familiar with child brides from her country of origin. But things are getting more westernized in other countries. So the possibility of this practice ending is becoming a reality.
Societal and financial constraints make it almost impossible to update old customs that seem barbaric to westerners like child brides. Just as for vegans, the eating of animal products seems barbaric and antiquated.
Learn more about the movement to end the practice of child brides.
But why you might wonder, why in the Sam-Hill am I comparing child brides to the ideas of veganism and having chickens in my fictional cottage garden? What do chickens have to do with child brides?
Using animals, especially female animals for milk and eggs, and using females as commodities for profit in general are deeply entrenched practices in human culture.
Chattel, Cattle.
If we as vegans do not come to understand the origins and dynamics of customs that we view as primitive or destructive, we will never be able to form logical arguments for creating the vegan world that we desire.
As a culture has more resources, childhood becomes a luxury we can afford. Soon equality for women and other marginalized people becomes the norm, and only this type of monetary and political change can open the doors to Veganism. Animals stop being seen as just objects to commodify when humans stop being used in this way.
As we mature as a human culture, we realize that a more powerful person shouldn’t take advantage of a younger or weaker person or being because it is bad for the more powerful person as well as the one in the victim seat. That is why most of us frown upon the idea of slavery, for instance.
So, all of this is why eggs are not vegan even if they are in your backyard laid by your favorite pet chicken and why I will never use my imaginary pet rescue chickens to get delicious eggs that I love, even when I move to the country and live in a little cottage. Moral concerns have ruined my enjoyment of eggs.
